Circular Bioeconomy Systems: A Path Toward a Sustainable Future

Nature’s intertwined biochemical processes, powered by solar energy, use the Earth’s resources to form biogeochemical cycles to create circles of life that provide food for sustaining life. These circles of life loop back used bio-resources to conserve them for future use. In the past, with a small global population distributed widely, the Earth produced surplus quantities of biological materials that were fossilized, and extra fresh water and minerals were stored below the Earth’s surface. However, over the past 100 years, with increasing knowledge and skills to modulate and regulate biochemical processes, humans have created biosystems (agriculture, forestry, aquaculture, and bioreactors) that mine the Earth’s stored resources and exploit them with greater efficiency than ever before. These biosystems have been very successful for meeting the ever-increasing human demands, but they have also been depleting stored natural resources and increasingly unwanted byproducts. Discarded byproducts pollute soil, water, and air and adversely affect functions of Earth’s ecosystems that renew and conserve resources to sustain the future. This chapter provides an overview on the importance of transitioning to circular bioeconomy systems, and having biological materials become the dominant resource for entire value-chains. It presents the complexities of bio-based systems, and the need for a multidisciplinary-systems approach for overcoming hurdles in the path to achieving a more circular bioeconomy. It also presents the need and suggests ways to build a professional society alliance and create an ecosystem in which self-organized multidisciplinary teams innovate system-level solutions for advancing toward more sustainable Circular Bioeconomy Systems.